


Llàgrimes de sang

by MissInkshaming



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Heavy Angst, Historical, Hurt No Comfort, Non-Graphic Violence, Religion, Spanish Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissInkshaming/pseuds/MissInkshaming
Summary: 1938.At seventeen, Antoni is recruited to fight in someone else's war.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Llàgrimes de sang

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Llàgrimes de sang](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27915751) by [MissInkshaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissInkshaming/pseuds/MissInkshaming). 



> Day 6 of Winter Spamano 2020: Angst

He still remembered his mother's tears when she read the letter, unable to produce any sound other than sobbing. She held him tightly in her trembling hands as if she were afraid he was going to vanish between her fingers without warning. It would have seemed ridiculous were it not for the fact that, in two years of war, she had lost her husband and one of her sons, and was now sending the other to an already lost cause. Antoni knew this and noticing the knot in his throat, remained painfully silent, as he had done so many times before.

A few days later, he left home at dawn with little more than the change of clothes he was wearing, accompanied by other boys from his village. He had spent his last nights doing two things: comforting his mother and reciting prayers. Only being able to fall asleep when his body could not stand it anymore. They both prayed for a near end of the war and his safe return with their rosaries. While he was enlisting, he played with his, well hidden in his pocket in case they wanted to take it away.*

In less than a month, he had received the news that he would be sent to the front line (and not to an auxiliary position as he originally believed), and started and finished his military training. He found himself in the banks of the Ebro, equipped with a tiny boat more suitable for a Sunday stroll than for traveling to the trenches. He had barely had time to break down in sobs and pray to God. He considered sending a letter to his mother, but full of lice and with nothing to eat, he had little to write home about, so he resigned with convincing himself that she was fine, despite the news of bombings that came every day.

Before crossing the river, a glass of cognac awaited the young soldiers. Antoni accepted it, even though he had never drunk alcohol before. If it was true that it gave courage, he needed all he could get. Some others rejected it, too distressed to be able to swallow the alcohol without vomiting.

While his companions rowed, Antoni's eyes jumped from one boat to another, finding only scrawny figures and youthful faces consumed by anxiety. Almost none could grow a proper beard yet, as his father used to say. No one wore a uniform, and they were all covered head to toe in dirt. He found it hard to grasp that they were war soldiers instead of war refugees.

Unwittingly, his mind returned to the fuzzy image of his brother. Gabriel was the brave one, he always had been, and as a child, Antoni danced constantly between envy and admiration. He was the first in their village to enlist when the war began, and the more time passed, the more he wondered why. He suspected that he would never be able to demand an answer. 

The war was atrocious, and Antoni had been aware of it from the very beginning, but until then his experience had been quite limited. When his father was recruited, his mother forbade him to listen to the radio at home or comment on the news in the newspaper. Life was little more than tending to the camp to have something to put in his mouth, go to mass, and occasionally meet friends in the plaza. At the time, the war was merely an unpermitted topic of conversation. It continued like that even when people began to arrive in droves from the city. What had once been a focus of opportunities was now only an easy target for the fascists' bombers, and people left their houses for a chance to survive.

The battlefield was something else. It seemed like a living death.

It was stifling hot during the day and bitterly cold at night, and they weren't provided with a single cloth to cover. He found himself whispering back to the bullets and shouting at the blasts of the bombs. He would vomit for minutes, even though he hadn't eaten in days, because of the stench of the corpses. 

When the shrapnel reached Antoni, his body didn't even try to fight back. Battered by violence and gnawed at by hunger, he held it as if it were a friend he hadn't seen for a long time.

What was left of him floated in the river hours later.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this in Català for its historical significance. You can find that version in my account too!  
> The title comes from the idiom "plorar llàgrimes de sang", which means to weep with great grief.  
> This has required much more research than I expected, although I'm only sharing some brief context here. Sadly, a lot of the content of this particular event may not be available in English, so If you have any questions, you're more than welcomed to ask my on [my tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/missinkshaming)
> 
> “The Ministry of Defense decrees the mobilization of the 1941 replacement, which includes all those who turn 18 before December 31st of the current year” 13th of April 1938, La Gazeta de la República (Official Journal of Spain during the Spanish Civil War).  
> Two years into the war, and very close to its end, the Republican faction forcibly recruited almost 30.000 boys between the ages of 17 and 18 (although there was no age restriction for volunteers, so some of the soldiers were as young as 14). These were popularly referred to as "La Leva del Biberón" (The Bottle Feeder Impressment), for how young they were. This was a last resort, as the Republic was quickly losing its territory to the Rebel faction and facing important dissidence and fragmentation from the inside.  
> A good quantity of these teens participated in what was the longest, largest, and arguably bloodiest battle of the Civil War, la Batalla del Ebro, malnourished, poorly armed, poorly dressed, and with less than a week of military training.  
> Most of them died on the battlefield, although some survived and are still alive nowadays, haunted first by the horrors of war and later by the postwar abuse in prisons and concentration camps.  
> The Civil War was a deeply traumatic event for Spanish history. This was intensified by Franco's regime, focused on clearly dividing its remaining population into two sides: winners (supporters of Franco and the Rebel faction) and losers (essentially everyone else). The transition, although praised by outsiders, didn't give the victims or their families any closure or helped fix the division. This is why even nowadays, it's still a difficult topic for many Spaniards.  
> I've been meaning to do canonverse Spain-centric fics focusing heavily on main historical events, but those will have to wait for a while still. This was a nice exercise to get ready for those though.  
> Yes, I've added Gabriel in here too. When the Spanish Civil War broke off, Portugal had already been under a dictatorship for a while, that's why I felt it was relevant to squeeze him in there.  
> I've decided to use Antoni (the Catalonian variant of Antonio) in honor of Antoni Quintana i Torres, one of the presidents of l'Agrupació de Supervivients de la Lleva del Biberó-41 (foundation for the Bottle Feeder Impressment's survivors).  
> * During the Republic, a strong anticlerical feeling grew among the population, especially in the far-left wing movements, that's why Antoni feels they might take his rosary away.  
> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments 💖


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